March 15th, 2007 (Post #74)

March 15th, 2007


Happiness is a warm tush.
British Pacific offered a deal I could not pass up just a couple of weeks ago. It was the
facia panel and the buttons to activate the heated seats option on 1999-2004 Discovery II’s. $36 bucks. It seems in the infinite wisdom of dealer options, that all the seats delivered with Discoverys included the heat panels to heat the seats.

And only if you ordered the heated seats option did they install the buttons to activate them. Brilliant. SO with about 5 minutes of time and the switches I upgraded my seats to heat. Easily the quickest upgrade with the highest payoff at the cheapest price, I’ve ever done.

Brake lines.
I had a feeling I hadn’t gotten all the brake lines off the Range Rover and I was right. There are two more rubber lines up underneath near the rear axle. All this time I was wondering how they did that. I knew there had to be flexible lines in the system somewhere, I just hadn’t seen them. SO I’ve still got to get those replaced before finishing the brake project on the restoration. It was dirty under there and the lines are slightly different than the front ones so getting them off wasn’t any fun. I’ll get them off on Sunday. Saturday my good friend and I are going to the Chicago Fire soccer game in Norman. I guess they are exhibitioning and we are lucky enough to see MLS here. The Fire is his favorite team as well. So double bonus. The triple bonus comes as it is St. Patrick’s day and O’Connell’s Irish Pub is just up the road from the stadium.

Oklahoma Edition
How could OkieRover not have an Oklahoma Edition badge on his Land Rovers? Well that is a rhetorical question of course. I had a good friend of mine, who works at a dealership, get me these badges. I have one for each of my Landies. They are purposely placed on various Ford Trucks and possibly Minivans that have certain features such as engine size, and some other stuff. But after I saw them on the TV I knew I had to have some for my Land Rovers. A big thanks goes out to him for tracking these down. They were apparently hard to come by and he had to pull a string or two to get them.

I owe you big time, thanks “Frankenstein”.

February 22th, 2007 (Post #73)

February 22th, 2007


Kick Ass Buttons.
Well, another good friend of mine and fellow Devil Dog helped me out with a condensed rendering of the menu pictures. Making them faster to load due to their smaller size.
Thanks a ton Bobby.

February 20th, 2007 (Post #72)

February 20th, 2007


Kick Ass Buttons.
My good friend in Grand Junction made me some new buttons for the header page.
I think they are totally awesome. They look great and are better than any button I’ve ever had on any of my sites. Thanks Josh, I owe you big time.

I don’t know when it happened but I must have deleted my stat checking code. Ooops. So I put it back.

Restoring the Rangie.
I finished the brake caliper rebuild. I have the pictures on the camera but I don’t have the write up done yet. Maybe if I get some time this week I’ll put my thoughts on that down.

I installed the calipers on the left side of the Rangie and hooked up the lines. I had to get some new cotter pins for the reinstall. I teased the clerk at Ace Hardware, “What, no stainless?”

And she responded, “Yeah, we got stainless.”

I was a bit surprised so I bought them. So how anal do you have to get to put stainless steel cotter pins on the tie rod ends? I think I have a disease.

I’m trying to decide which project gets my attention next. The weather this week is great but the timing couldn’t be worse. We have a funeral tomorrow and family in town all week. Also RovErica’s softball team meeting is tonight. And Saturday is out as I have been asked to be in a movie production. Something to do with the Civil War. More on that later. So not only do I not have time to do my taxes, I don’t have time to work on my restoration.
Gaah!

Well there’s always next week I guess.

February 16th, 2007 (Post #71)

February 16th, 2007


A nice drive.
I took the Disco down to do some work for JagGuy in far Southwest Oklahoma. I wrote about it and posted it A Nice Drive.

Restoring the Rangie.
Started putting the calipers together. It’s pretty scary to me to think this work will be tested when I try to stop. The brake fluid is taking the Self Etching Primer off. I thought it wouldn’t. But I was wrong. I’m not sure how I’ll clean that up.

I have one of the swivel seals replaced and put all the way back together. I’m going to do the other side and try to photograph every step. Which there are many. But when I’m done I’ll have a complete tear down and reassemble of the hub to the swivel seal. Hopefully that will help someone out someday.

I also wrote up the Ice Storm of 2006.

Hope you enjoy the read.

February 5th, 2007 (Post #70)

February 5th, 2007


Restoring the Rangie.
Took the brake lines off this weekend. I took the hoses down to Hoseco in south Oklahoma City.
JagGuy recommended them and so I took the old hoses down there to get the new hoses made. I had them put an extra 3 inches on the hose to allow for a lift kit if I choose to go that route in the future.

I also cleaned up the brake calipers for the paint job. I really wanted to paint the calipers or have them nice and shiny clean. Well after cleaning on them they cannot be cleaned back to shiney. So I am going to paint them. The fact that brake fluid will strip an and all paint off made that a challenge. So JagGuy suggested that I use self etching primer. It will be gray. I bought Mar-Hyde Self Etching Primer. I bought it at O’Reilly’s Auto Store. I can live with gray considering after a few months I’ll be surprised if I can tell I ever painted it.

I am dreading the swivel seal replacements. I really didn’t enjoy those jobs the first time. This time I get the added fun of it being cold in the garage while I do it.

I’m running out of weekends to get projects done. I still have to do the painting and I also have to get the drive shaft on the Discovery replaced and do all that drive line stuff. I need the lift to make that an easy job. And it right now has an Isuzu Trooper on it. I just need to schedule a day and get it down there. I’d like to have that done before I drive to Houston to take care of some family business.

January 22nd, 2007 (Post #69)

January 22nd, 2007


Cadence Marie is doing well and growing like a weed.

Restoring the Rangie.
Did a bunch of work this last weekend on the 93 LWB.

Headlamps
Replaced the head lamps with some Hellas. They are sweet. German engineering in da house! I love that commerical for VWs. Check it out.

Heater fan resistor.
Replaced the resistor for the fan. It’s located in the vent cowl. Nice place to keep it cool but
a horrible place due to water and rust and such. The replacement was no picnic. But wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. I think I’d recommend anyone tearing out the dash to replace it when the have it all apart. The instructions say you can pull the plug out through the hole but that was not the case.
I’ve finished the write up on the Heater Fan Resistor. Check it out.

Brake Calipers.
I have the brake calipers off. They are soaking in a bucket of diesel in the garage. I want to paint them but not sure how that will go yet. The kit is coming in this week to replace the seals and such. You can check out my progress on the Brake Caliper page.

Swivel Seals.
I ordered the swivel seals. I’m not looking forward to tearing that apart again but it must be done. Maybe this next weekend I will tear them down. OR at least one of them as they are no fun to work on. You can see some of that work here on the Swivel Seal page.